An old Internet adage is “no one knows you’re a dog on the
Internet”. As it turns out in many cases, no one knows who you are at all – and
that may be that is a good thing.
The New York Times of 25 Mar 15 ran an article “Behind a
Veil of Anonymity, Online Vigilantes Battle Islamic State” (see: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/25/world/middleeast/behind-a-veil-of-anonymity-online-vigilantes-battle-the-islamic-state.html,
which is also the photo source).
The essence of the article is that there is a group of
anonymous ‘hackers’ who patrol Social Media in search of Daesh proponents and
supporters. These individuals purportedly take the cyber battle to these accounts,
particularly on Twitter and Facebook.
The article also emphasizes that a significant number of
this cyber vigilantes are women.
This is a global battlefield and for the moment let’s make
the assumption that the targets of these hackers are not in the US. Assuming
this to be the case, one could argue that the mission of countering Daesh
propaganda is a military one and should be undertaken by MISO personnel.
By way of precedent – I think it’s pretty safe to presume
that the Chinese info warriors are heavily engaged on behalf of their
government in such venues. Given the labor-intensive nature of social media,
this would seem to give the Chinese, never at a loss for personnel, a
significant advantage. Perhaps it is time for us to take a page out of their
playbook for a change.
In addition, the high proportion of civilians and non-state
actors engaged in social media on behalf of our enemies mitigates for
significant resources, military and civilian to counter the influence threat.
Continuing with the argument does this mean that there needs
to be a partnership between civilian and MISO social media counter Daesh
personnel?
I’d argue that this is not the case. The leaderless
counter-Daesh force should continue in is anonymity while the real question
before the community is should MISO (heavily reserve based perhaps) be ‘deployed’
(actually working from home station) as a counter force to Daesh Social Media
propaganda?
I’ll leave that answer to you.
1 comment:
Look into a famous hacker that goes by the name jester. Also if the reserves were to begin a social media campaign, (which is unlikely considering CAPOC cannot figure how to gain the non-attribution approval- much less change the backwards culture, sorry for my digression) - it would be an ideal, cost effective way to wage war against a yet undeclared enemy. I am not sure the national objective is really to win against daesh until it suits the corporations.
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